Marines’ F-35 training hits one-year mark (GALLERY)

U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Julian Morales, left, and Sgt. Robert Coates perform a "hot" refuel of an F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter at Eglin Air Force Base on Wednesday. In the year since the Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron-501 flew its first F-35B mission at Eglin's 33d Fighter Wing, it's pilots have flown 833 local sorties and logged about 1,100 flight hours as well as developed procedures like this one for refueling the F-35B with the engine "hot" or running.

DEVON RAVINE / Daily News

By LAUREN SAGE REINLIE / Daily News

Published: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 05:42 PM.

EGLIN AFB — The engine of the F-35B was still running Wednesday morning when Marine Sgt. Robert Coates ran a hose from a 20,000-gallon tanker trunk to pump fuel into the jet.

The process of refueling with the jet’s engines running, dubbed “hot refueling,” takes about 25 minutes.

After the tank was filled, the pilot taxied off and returned to the sky for his second flight of the day. Another F-35 then rolled up for more fuel.

The refueling process has allowed Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 to increase its sorties by 40 percent. Four Marine F-35s flew eight sorties Wednesday, one year to the day after the branch’s variant of the military’s newest stealth fighter took off for the first time at Eglin.

Since then, the Marines’ F-35 program has grown by leaps and bounds.

Eglin is the only schoolhouse that trains F-35 pilots and maintainers from all branches of the U.S. military and from international partners.

When the Marines began flying a year ago, they were piloting about three sorties a week. A chaser plane, usually an F-16, would follow behind to make sure the one-seat aircraft was operating correctly.

The F-35s had very limited capability. They weren’t able to fly more than 30 miles over water and couldn’t use many of their high-tech instruments.

Now, they fly 40 to 50 sorties a week.

Jets take off four at a time. They can fly with different aircraft and refuel in the air. The hot refueling allowed eight F-35s to fly 16 sorties in three hours recently.

The Marines’ 13 jets are now able to use radar, the electro-optical targeting system and specialized navigation.

Overall, they’ve taken almost 900 flights and spent over 1,100 hours in the air.

Perhaps most significantly, all those hours on the ground and in the sky have allowed the squadron to train enough pilots and maintainers to ship them off to stand up their own F-35 combat fleet, the first in the world.

“I could not be more proud or pleased with what we’ve been able to do in the last year,” said Lt. Col. David Berke, commander of the squadron.

Part of the process has been to develop maintenance procedures for the jet, from replacing a wing tip light to removing and installing an engine.

“Every time you have to fix something on this airplane, it’s the first time it’s been fixed,” Berke said.

Since the jets arrived, the maintainers at Eglin have authored more than 1,000 procedures that will be used for years to come.

They have trained about a dozen pilots and numerous maintainers, and sent them to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona. The fleet there will be the military’s first combat-ready force within the next two years.

That will be possible in part because of the work of the 200 Marines at Eglin over the past year,Berke said.

“We’ve allowed them to hit the ground running,” he said. “When they are declared operations capable in 2015, they are really going to have capability. They aren’t going to be cleared on paper to start figuring things out; they are going to be ready to roll.”

The Marines soon will receive their first Block 2 aircraft, which will have even more capabilities, Berke said. They will eventually have 24 jets at Eglin.

The Marines variant of F-35 can take off and land conventionally or make a vertical landing, something that has never before been possible for a stealth fighter jet.

A pilot trained at Eglin recently made his first vertical landing at Yuma.

By the end of the year, Berke said vertical landings will be commonplace at Eglin.

The training at Eglin and the stand-up of the fleet at Yuma have taken place while the jet is still being developed by Lockheed Martin, a process called concurrency.

Berke said concurrency has without question helped them get to where they are today. He said that although it can seem slow at times with development setbacks and delays that can occasionally affect everyday operations, the program is moving quickly overall.

The people training and operating the F-35B can work closely with the developers and give immediate feedback on how the plane is functioning.

“The cost of it is a slow process with very deliberate growth and mitigation, but overall the airplane evolves much quicker,” he said.

Berke has commanded the Marine squadron for just over a year.

He said he is honored to be a part of the program at such an important point in its growth, but that he also feels obligated to the aircraft that the country and the world will likely depend on for decades to come.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to get to write the first chapter of a story that’s going to last 50 years,” Berke said.

After the tank was filled, the pilot taxied off and returned to the sky for his second flight of the day. Another F-35 then rolled up for more fuel.

The refueling process has allowed Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 to increase its sorties by 40 percent. Four Marine F-35s flew eight sorties Wednesday, one year to the day after the branch’s variant of the military’s newest stealth fighter took off for the first time at Eglin.

Since then, the Marines’ F-35 program has grown by leaps and bounds.

Eglin is the only schoolhouse that trains F-35 pilots and maintainers from all branches of the U.S. military and from international partners.

When the Marines began flying a year ago, they were piloting about three sorties a week. A chaser plane, usually an F-16, would follow behind to make sure the one-seat aircraft was operating correctly.

The F-35s had very limited capability. They weren’t able to fly more than 30 miles over water and couldn’t use many of their high-tech instruments.

Now, they fly 40 to 50 sorties a week.

Jets take off four at a time. They can fly with different aircraft and refuel in the air. The hot refueling allowed eight F-35s to fly 16 sorties in three hours recently.

The Marines’ 13 jets are now able to use radar, the electro-optical targeting system and specialized navigation.

Overall, they’ve taken almost 900 flights and spent over 1,100 hours in the air.

Perhaps most significantly, all those hours on the ground and in the sky have allowed the squadron to train enough pilots and maintainers to ship them off to stand up their own F-35 combat fleet, the first in the world.

“I could not be more proud or pleased with what we’ve been able to do in the last year,” said Lt. Col. David Berke, commander of the squadron.

Part of the process has been to develop maintenance procedures for the jet, from replacing a wing tip light to removing and installing an engine.

“Every time you have to fix something on this airplane, it’s the first time it’s been fixed,” Berke said.

Since the jets arrived, the maintainers at Eglin have authored more than 1,000 procedures that will be used for years to come.

They have trained about a dozen pilots and numerous maintainers, and sent them to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona. The fleet there will be the military’s first combat-ready force within the next two years.

That will be possible in part because of the work of the 200 Marines at Eglin over the past year,Berke said.

“We’ve allowed them to hit the ground running,” he said. “When they are declared operations capable in 2015, they are really going to have capability. They aren’t going to be cleared on paper to start figuring things out; they are going to be ready to roll.”

The Marines soon will receive their first Block 2 aircraft, which will have even more capabilities, Berke said. They will eventually have 24 jets at Eglin.

The Marines variant of F-35 can take off and land conventionally or make a vertical landing, something that has never before been possible for a stealth fighter jet.

A pilot trained at Eglin recently made his first vertical landing at Yuma.

By the end of the year, Berke said vertical landings will be commonplace at Eglin.

The training at Eglin and the stand-up of the fleet at Yuma have taken place while the jet is still being developed by Lockheed Martin, a process called concurrency.

Berke said concurrency has without question helped them get to where they are today. He said that although it can seem slow at times with development setbacks and delays that can occasionally affect everyday operations, the program is moving quickly overall.

The people training and operating the F-35B can work closely with the developers and give immediate feedback on how the plane is functioning.

“The cost of it is a slow process with very deliberate growth and mitigation, but overall the airplane evolves much quicker,” he said.

Berke has commanded the Marine squadron for just over a year.

He said he is honored to be a part of the program at such an important point in its growth, but that he also feels obligated to the aircraft that the country and the world will likely depend on for decades to come.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to get to write the first chapter of a story that’s going to last 50 years,” Berke said.